The recently viewed products widget does not work if the minicart block is removed

[jlballes]

Preconditions and environment

• Magento enterprise edition, version 2.4.5-p4, installed by composer

Steps to reproduce

I have worked in a website that does not use the default cart and checkout of Magento. So:

1. I have removed the minicart block from a default.xml in my theme (/app/design/frontend/[Vendor]/[theme_name]/Magento_Theme/layout/default.xml):
   <referenceBlock name="minicart" remove="true"/>

2. I have added the "recently viewed products" widget in the product detail page from admin panel or by code from a layout XML file.

Expected result

The "recently viewed products" widget is shown in product detail page and works correctly.

Actual result

The "recently viewed products" widget is not shown, and there is not information in logs o in browser console.

If I remove the previous line that remove the minicart block, the "recently viewed products" widget works well.

I have found the exactly lines necessary in order to the widget works well. These lines are in the minicart template (vendor/magento/module-checkout/view/frontend/templates/cart/minicart.phtml):
<?= /* @noEscape */ $secureRenderer->renderTag('script', [], 'window.checkout = ' . /* @noEscape */ $block->getSerializedConfig(), false); ?>

In my opinion the relation between "recently viewed products" widget and minicart has not sense.

Additional information

No response

Release note

No response

Triage and priority

• Severity: S0 - Affects critical data or functionality and leaves users without workaround.
• Severity: S1 - Affects critical data or functionality and forces users to employ a workaround.
• Severity: S2 - Affects non-critical data or functionality and forces users to employ a workaround.
• Severity: S3 - Affects non-critical data or functionality and does not force users to employ a workaround.
• Severity: S4 - Affects aesthetics, professional look and feel, “quality” or “usability”.

[m2-assistant]

Hi @jlballes. Thank you for your report.
To speed up processing of this issue, make sure that the issue is reproducible on the vanilla Magento instance following Steps to reproduce. To deploy vanilla Magento instance on our environment, Add a comment to the issue:

• @magento give me 2.4-develop instance - upcoming 2.4.x release
• For more details, review the Magento Contributor Assistant documentation.
• Add a comment to assign the issue: @magento I am working on this
• To learn more about issue processing workflow, refer to the Code Contributions.

---

Join Magento Community Engineering Slack and ask your questions in #github channel.
⚠️ According to the Magento Contribution requirements, all issues must go through the Community Contributions Triage process. Community Contributions Triage is a public meeting.
🕙 You can find the schedule on the Magento Community Calendar page.
📞 The triage of issues happens in the queue order. If you want to speed up the delivery of your contribution, join the Community Contributions Triage session to discuss the appropriate ticket.

[m2-assistant]

Hi @engcom-Dash. Thank you for working on this issue.
In order to make sure that issue has enough information and ready for development, please read and check the following instruction: 👇

• 1. Verify that issue has all the required information. (Preconditions, Steps to reproduce, Expected result, Actual result).
• 2. Verify that issue has a meaningful description and provides enough information to reproduce the issue.
• 3. Add Area: XXXXX label to the ticket, indicating the functional areas it may be related to.
• 4. Verify that the issue is reproducible on 2.4-develop branch
     Details

     - Add the comment @magento give me 2.4-develop instance to deploy test instance on Magento infrastructure.
     - If the issue is reproducible on 2.4-develop branch, please, add the label Reproduced on 2.4.x.
     - If the issue is not reproducible, add your comment that issue is not reproducible and close the issue and stop verification process here!

---

• Join Magento Community Engineering Slack and ask your questions in #github channel.

[m2-assistant]

Hi @engcom-November. Thank you for working on this issue.
In order to make sure that issue has enough information and ready for development, please read and check the following instruction: 👇

• 1. Verify that issue has all the required information. (Preconditions, Steps to reproduce, Expected result, Actual result).
• 2. Verify that issue has a meaningful description and provides enough information to reproduce the issue.
• 3. Add Area: XXXXX label to the ticket, indicating the functional areas it may be related to.
• 4. Verify that the issue is reproducible on 2.4-develop branch
  Details

  - Add the comment @magento give me 2.4-develop instance to deploy test instance on Magento infrastructure.
  - If the issue is reproducible on 2.4-develop branch, please, add the label Reproduced on 2.4.x.
  - If the issue is not reproducible, add your comment that issue is not reproducible and close the issue and stop verification process here!
• 5. Add label Issue: Confirmed once verification is complete.
• 6. Make sure that automatic system confirms that report has been added to the backlog.

[engcom-November]

Hello @jlballes,

Thank you for the report and collaboration!

We were able to reproduce this issue on 2.4-develop.
We created a custom theme to reproduce this issue, and added recently viewed products widget.
Take a look at the screenshot below:
When <referenceBlock name="minicart" remove="true"/> is added in default.xml

When <referenceBlock name="minicart" remove="true"/> is removed from default.xml

We can see that only when minicart is enabled we are able to see recently viewed products widget, which shouldn't be the case. Hence confirming the issue.

Please find the custom theme used to reproduce this issue.
customTheme.zip

Thank you.